Nostalgia and impermanence

I was walking past my old school today (I only went there for a year having moved with the family after my dad got a job with Devon County). 50 years ago, the part that is being demolished was a 5^th form block, that specific bit was a lounge coffee bar. It was here that I set the KitKat red wrapper four finger ripping record. Having collected 100 of the outer wrappers using just my fingers ripping them apart. It was heralded as a world record! The rest of the building was also significant for me. By the coffee area (I don’t remember coffee being served much there) were the private study booths. Downstairs was a workshop that facilitated apprentice level wood and metal workshops. Here I created my nearly 2-meter interlocking forms (triangles) sculpture for my CSE art. I spent three hours in the private study booths building up enough courage to go to the local youth club later that evening and began a friendship that was to totally change my life, with someone I initially was afraid of but who 25 years later was to die prematurely of a heart problem.

As I walk round Dawlish there are many such places, many not being demolished, some changed but others so much the same. The small cove that I go to each day is one. Instantly recognisable (beach fires, not quiet my first kiss, readings of Spike Milligan, endless Donovan songs . . . ). The sea still comes in and goes out. It’s the same sea, same sky.

I was doing some training at the weekend about using images to facilitate change both personally and situationally. Fiona McBeth, herself brining with the name a seminal memory of some training she co-wrote in the late 1990’s, introduced the group the The Hungry Ghosts. In the training they are represented as silhouettes. The concept comes from a Buddhist perspective, and they inhabit one of the rather negative places that within the Karmic cycle one may be re birthed. There is plenty on-line if you are interested. The hungry ghost though are the representations of the grasping holding self-seeking self. Being hungry they cannot be satisfied. It’s something about that hole in the self that nothing can fill and as such is related to addiction in therapeutic terms. The concept of “grasping” and I guess that a more modern from might be to use the term “locking on”, is simply being so attached to a thing or somethings that they are dominant in your life. Or that a person is so self-seeking they have no regard for anything or body else.

Again there is a very strong corelation to addiction, perhaps the difference may be in the argument as to the matter of choice or not. If you want o read more about this then Gabo Mate (In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts Book by Gabor Maté) is the person to read or listen to.

It is interesting to look at what are the things we hang on to, because at one level they are pleasant memories, but at another they are a backward hold on out future potentiality.  Janus in ancient Roman mythology was the god of beginnings, transitions, and endings. He was shown with two faces one looking to the future and the other to the past. Neither of these things actually exist. The past is just that past and the future is not yet come. It is the here and now in which we live, each moment, each experience that is happening. This is the real. 

Much of our anxiety / stress comes from what has happened and what might happen next. Living what ifs means we can fail to live in the present moment with all the richness of what that is brining. We cannot change what has been and we despite many desperate attempts, make the future as we want it to be. I do not mean that we cannot learn from the past, nor enjoy our pleasant memories from it but grasping to it, living in it will only be the phantasy of what we were once and no longer are. Trying to organise or control things that are not yet is also beyond our ability. And spending all our time trying will only bring frustration and anxiety.

Here is something to try about being in the present. If you like Maltesers then place one on your tongue and see how long you can just leave it there to melt. No crunching just let it sit there and experience the chocolaty goodness. If you drink tea, coffee or I like red wine, when you take a sip think of the place that this has come from. With the wine I like to think of the vine, where and how it was planted the years of growth, the good times of plenty of sun and the times of drought. How the fruit grew and filled with stored sugar until it was bursting. Then cut and sent to be crushed, releasing all that juice poured into a vat with its natural yeast. I like to think about the grape pickers and the people who extract the juice, the vintner with years of experience at judging and balancing, knowing the good years from the best years. The fermentation and the alchemy of the yeast working on the must changing the sugar into alcohol. Then the barrelling and the maturation sometimes for years. Again, I like to think about those who are skilled in knowing when this is enough and the wine is ready for bottling, labelling shipping and then perhaps kept further and sent to homes or restaurants to be bought and opened. The smell of the time of the making, the fermenting and the sipping smelling and tasting.  All that skill, work and change brings to this moment the exquisite taste whose journey continues when sipped into the mouth and infusing the nasal passages and the pallet. Perhaps enhancing the food being eaten, perhaps enhancing the dinner table discussion with friends, or loved ones. How could one not honour those who have brought this into being, by being a part of even the cheapest bottle of wine.

Living in the moment and knowing perhaps even offering gratitude is a great way of being present. Fully alive to what is happening. Because it is this moment, this instant that we live fully.